Philippines is routinely hit by typhoons. At least 20 such storms are expected to hit the island in 2013 [Xinhua]

Typhoon Utor (also known as Labuyo), the second strongest storm to hit the northern Philippines this year, has killed six and displaced nearly 100,000 people due to heavy rains and flooding.

At press time, at least 44 people were reported missing. Among the missing are a number of fishermen who were hit by three-metre waves triggered by the typhoon.

The storm, which hit the island on Monday with winds reaching 210 kilometres per hour, has already caused nearly $1.6 million worth of damage to property and crops, said the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC).

“Trees have fallen down, roofs have been torn off houses, electric poles and electric towers have collapsed,” the NDRRMC’s Reynaldo Balido told the media.

Balido said that relief efforts were ongoing to clear roads and downed power lines leading to the three towns of Dilasag, Casiguran and Dinalungan, which at press time were inaccessible.

Utor is expected to move across the South China Sea and hit China’s Guangdong province on Wednesday night. According to state media Xinhua, China’s maritime authority on Tuesday has already issued the second-highest weather alert warning.

57 founding members, many of them prominent US allies, will sign into creation the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank on Monday, the first major global financial instrument independent from the Bretton Woods system.

Representatives of the countries will meet in Beijing on Monday to sign an agreement of the bank, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said on Thursday. All the five BRICS countries are also joining the new infrastructure investment bank.

The agreement on the $100 billion AIIB will then have to be ratified by the parliaments of the founding members, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said at a daily press briefing in Beijing.

The AIIB is also the first major multilateral development bank in a generation that provides an avenue for China to strengthen its presence in the world’s fastest-growing region.